The modern tendency of ongoing policy growth originally has a positive aim to provide society with decent laws protecting their rights and satisfying their needs. However, the rapid changes of policy accumulation can be more likely assessed as an attribution issue: the causative connection between policy interference and outcomes become foggy. The impact of all the laws provided by the government on population is oftentimes harsh to estimate due to the continuous changes and movements. The current picture of constant changes shows a vast number of actions and some possible outcomes that are hardly noticeable. Moreover, policy accumulation emphasizes the issue of modern democracies when the opinion of every human is essential and must be heard. To reach a high level of legitimacy, the government considers the voices of both minorities and majorities and follows the voice of the society having decent intentions and goals.
Policy growth makes the political content complicated and struggling to comprehend. The more complex the political structure becomes, the further it goes away from the public, which consequently leads to society misinterpretations of the upper layers and senseless prioritization in the democratic world. Policy accumulation also leads to longer periods of law implementation and creates boreoarctic burdens being a part of complicated structures. Democratic structure’s stability will straightly depend on their ability to make policy accumulation more sustainable (Adam et al., 2019, p. 3). The number of political objects and tools has also developed within time which could possibly lead to policy growth. It becomes complicated to evaluate the effectiveness of government policies due to their multilayered structure and complex policy mixes (Adam, Steinebach and Knill, 2018, p. 286). The policy growth and intensification have been developing over decades, and the current tendency leads modern democratic societies to the issue of law overproducing and system complication. In this assignment, the possible reasons for policy accumulation will be researched, and its subsequent changes in society will be discovered.
The growth of political structure is an issue of democratic countries that care about legitimacy and every human right. Adam et al. (2019, p. 5) emphasized that sometimes governments are too poorly equipped to answer to the rising demands of society. The perception of democracies ended with a consumer attitude towards a government that might eventually lead to democracy failure. The rising number of minorities, unstable society groups with a high level of poverty, illnesses; refugees, and various cultural clusters have subjective opinions and requests for changes. Trying to provide minorities with protection, satisfying their needs, the state must constantly balance in the unstable trap of law consideration.
One of the factors that could explain the variance in the extent of policy accumulation between countries is the level of trust in the government, the current policy of the state, and the structure of the society. In developing countries, the opinion of the society is rarely considered, and the government takes the most of decision-making on itself. Even though the ongoing spread of social media helps influence the policy; still, most of the changes rely on upper layers: politicians and massive figures. The level of trust and support the population received from the state is mostly weak and expects future enhancement. For instance, in Latin America and Africa, people have low social and political trust due to poor economic performance of the government, rising inequality, and corruption of political leaders (Uslander, 2018, p. 8). Community groups can also be homogenous, having similar views and demands. North Korea represents an ethnically non-diverse society with its distinctive culture and dictatorial political structure (Seth, 2018, p. 7). In North Korea, humans might have a lower demand to cooperate with the government and disclose their social needs.
Across the sectors, the policy of accumulation differs because various branches have an unequal impact on foreign and domestic politics. In Germany, the steel industry and machinery products represent strong branches of economies, providing people with a workplace and raising the economy. Germany was estimated the world’s third-largest exporting country in 2013 (US$ 1.70 billion) (Nasiri, Alleyne and Yihui, 2016, p. 2). The number of laws implemented in these industries is relevantly higher than the sectors affecting moral aspects such as homophily, right protection of refugees, and others. The innovation implementation is essential for massive branches of industry as they lead to future success and economic growth. The government encourages the development of successful directions by providing tax advantages. Inside the country, the variation between policy implementation towards various areas is a subsequence of prioritization and a beneficial approach. Intensifying and developing the branches bringing profit to the economy, and rising GDP leads to further improvement of the country’s indicators.
Such topic as COVID-19 pandemics takes a central part lately. Controlling the virus mutation and spreading stays central in the current policy of every country. With ongoing changes and travels, the number of laws and restrictions raise within days. For instance, Norway has inserted COVID-19 hotels for every person entering the country and having no citizenship (The coronavirus situation: information regarding quarantine hotels, 2021, para. 12). A variety of restrictions put on the duration of stay, vaccines data, and acceptance have been constantly revised since the hotel’s implementation, November 2020. The laws influencing different groups were confusing the incomers and met a specific level of negativity from travelers.
Policy accumulation is clearly seen on this occasion, and its impacts on the country’s economy and dramatic. No traveler was let cross the border after the infection appearance, which means weakening of Norwegian krone and economic outcomes. Moreover, the stress level among the population limits the everyday life of Norwegians. Many students studying online during pandemics were reporting about thinking at least once about committing suicide. Rationalization in planning the restrictions should be a key factor for the Norwegian economy as limiting the people entering the country from abroad; milder limits should be put on social activity.
COVID-19 is a global crisis for every country’s economy and intensified policy growth to put corresponding restrictions on traveling and some social aspects of life. Every crisis impacts persistent supply disruption, global interconnection, and communication. COVID-19 dramatically impacts the economy and increases policymakers to prolong restrictions and apply new laws. Thus, the influence of the current pandemic is mostly negative especially talking about policy accumulation. The other crisis known worldwide is the financial crisis in 2008 that had also influenced the political and financial structure leading to the fall of the economy. However, the outcomes of Lehman Brothers bankruptcy led to better control of the market and financial sphere by the government. The history of the company developed the banking sphere and led to current limitations in issuing lawns and credits to society.
Non-controllable acceptance of credits was given back then to any person without judging his credit history or level of income. Nowadays, people know of the importance of credit history, salary, and employment in the process of lawn recovery from a bank. These indicators were learned due to events of the financial crisis and taught the population the possible outcomes of uncontrolled businesses and financial strategies. This example can serve as a positive impact on law intensification and future enhancement of the banking sphere. Moreover, the population of the United States, after the events on September 15, 2008, felt more protected and safe. The rising level of trust in the government and increased control over the industry led to the improvement of the financial indicators and strengthened the economy.
Such dramatic changes cannot lead to breaking the general trend of policy accumulation. Most of the time, crises have a tendency to worsen the economy and demand corresponding measures from the government. Such modern policy growth has to be manipulated by the state, limiting society’s requests. Democracy without limits loses its initial goal and brings to the complication of the systems, and does not provide the requested changes. To save simple and accessible systems, the state has to implement several regulations on the governmental apparat that can filter the demands from society groups and integrate the most profitable changes in the current structure. If no actions are taken, the gap between people and the government will increase, and there will be no future comprehension of the modern system from the public side. Policy accumulation is an inevitable feature of the democratic society and can lead the government into a responsiveness trap.
Reference List
Adam, C., Hurka, S., Knill, C. and Steinebach, Y. (2019) Policy accumulation and the democratic responsiveness trap. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Adam, C., Steinebach, Y. and Knill, C. (2018) ‘Neglected challenges to evidence-based policy-making: the problem of policy accumulation,’ Policy Sciences, 51(3), pp. 269–290.
Seth, M. J. (2018) North Korea. London: Macmillan International Higher Education.
Nasiri, A., Alleyne, A. R. and Yihui, L. (2016) ‘Analysis of innovation management in German enterprises,’ Cogent Business & Management, 3(1), 1216727.
The coronavirus situation: information regarding quarantine hotels (2021). Web.
Uslaner, E. M. (2018) The Oxford handbook of social and political trust. New York: Oxford University Press.